Power
by Winter Jackson
Summary: Percy's hand took on a grip of steel on Nico's shoulder, shuddering as a foreign power flowed through him, battering down his mental defenses with ruthless force. The crack spread further, the ground began to shake, and Percy was rooted to the spot, helplessly watching as he had no control of his powers. Oneshot. Ties in with my other oneshot, Control.


Percy should've seen it coming. In hindsight, it was so blantantly obvious that Nico was going to blow, but Percy—in all his Seaweed-Brained glory—ignored the signs. If he hadn't ignored it, he wouldn't have accidentally torn Camp Half-Blood in half. If he hadn't ignored it, though, he would never have realized just how powerful Nico was.

Family had always been a touchy subject for Nico, and how old Nico really was wasn't exactly a secret in the camp. But his backstory, however, was. So when a son of Ares—Sherman, Percy thought—decided that the son of Hades was weak enough for a son of Ares to pick on him, and picked the topic of his family, well...it was Goode all over again, except this time it being Nico and Camp Half-Blood.

"Take it back." Nico's voice was so low it was almost an animalistic growl, and his eyes were sparking with hellfire. Sherman laughed at him. "_Take it back_," Sherman mocked in a high-pitched, whiny voice. "No, death spawn. I won't _take it back_."

Percy walked up behind Nico, taller than all of them with his solid six-foot build. "That's a shame, Sherman. Because you've got two of the Big Three's kids against you. Now all we need is Thals to join the party, eh, Nico?"

Sherman sneered. For all his brawn and knowledge of weapons, _battle tactics_ don't exactly stick—like knowing when you're outclassed. "Mama's boys, both o' ya. An' Nico's mama's _dead_."

"Tell me something, Sherman," Percy said coolly. "Nico was born in the 1940s. His mother was already in her thirties, so she'd be at least a hundred now. How many people do _you_ know that are a hundred and are the mother of a Big Three's kid?"

Sherman fell silent, and Percy forged on. "You sneer because we're Mama's boys, but you should ask your sister, your leader, your counselor, what she thinks of Sally Jackson. My mother looks after Clarisse as if she were her own child. She looks after Nico. She looks after Thalia when she drops by. She looks after all the demigods who want a parent that isn't abusive, that won't yell at them, that won't look at them with hate or disgust or longing. Tell me, Sherman, is your mother loving? Does she know you're a demigod? Did Ares tell her about his godly identity?"

"Yes," Sherman said proudly. "He told her that he was a god. She knows I'm a demigod, and she does love me."

"And how often do you see her?" Percy asked quietly.

Sherman stopped cold.

"My mother lives in New York," Percy said. "She was the lover of a Big Three, and knew who he was, and didn't go nuts after realizing whose attention she caught. She married a stinking drunk that beat her to cover up my scent. I would've been killed long before I ever realized that I was a demigod if she hadn't married him. Either that, or I would've been here permanently at a very young age, like Annabeth. She had the guts to turn him to stone with Medusa's head that I brought home, ridding her of him forever. She got remarried to a decent mortal guy named Paul. He knows my heritage. I admit, he was skeptical at first. Now, he's used to coming into my room with the window shattered and my bed flipped because of some kind of monster hiding in my room, waiting to ambush me."

Nico was vibrating next to Percy, practically daring Sherman to target Sally as the next victim with his eyes. Percy put a hand on his shoulder and squeezed it, unwilling to let this escalate. (Too bad he was ignoring the fact that Nico's hand was wreathed in hellfire, and he'd summoned his sword from who-knows-where.)

"You really expect me to believe—"

Percy's hand tightened on Nico's shoulder as the younger boy took a threatening step towards the son of Ares.

"—that a single mortal woman could—_would!_—do all that? You're crazy, dude," Sherman snorted in contempt.

Nico stomped his foot like a petulant child, and while Percy's eyes widened, Sherman laughed. "You—"

Then the ground split itself in half. Percy was frozen, his hand taking on a grip of steel on his cousin's shoulder. He had power coursing through him, nearly giving him a high. The power was foreign, unfamiliar, but so similar to his own geokinetic powers that he'd been trying to suppress for weeks that he instinctively pushed it away, but it just glided by his mental pushes. Percy was rooted to the spot, unable to move, helplessly watching as the foreign power combined with his own, and used his power to keep the crack widening, the earth shaking.

He was getting lightheaded. _Stop!_ he screamed in his head. _Stop, stop, stop! Oh my gods, what the heck is going on?!_

With all the willpower and concentration he could muster, he wrenched his powers away from the foreign power that was using him, and shoved it out of him. Percy gasped as he felt himself able to move again, and wrenched his hand away from Nico's shoulder, stumbling backwards and collapsing. The foriegn whatever-it-was shattered and retreated from his soul and body as soon as he wrenched his hand away...from Nico. Percy looked over at his cousin, his eyes wide with awe.

At the same time that Percy broke contact, Nico hunched over like he'd been punched and fell on his butt. He was panting, and the earthquake subsided, and the crack stopped growing, even though it already split the camp in two. His dark eyes looked at Percy, tired and bewildered. "Did we just...?"

"Tear the Camp in two?" Percy offered, sprawled in the grass. "Combine powers? Instinctively use each other as a fuel source so that we _could_ tear the camp in half? Yeah, I think we did."

Percy tried sitting up, and the world swam in front of him, so he eased himself back down onto the grass. "I don't think I ever realized how powerful you were, Percy," Nico said tiredly.

Percy laughed a bit. "I think that goes for both of us, dude. I didn't realize how powerful you were, either."

"You've got good barriers."

"Yeah, after causing the earthquake at Goode, I've been shying away from my geokinetic powers. Yours had the similar feel, and I couldn't stand that."

"Are we gonna seal that back up?" Nico asked after a little while of silence.

Percy sighed. "Yeah. After I take a nap and eat enough for a small army."

Nico half-laughed, half-groaned. "Don't talk to me about food, please."

"Food," Percy snickered.

* * *

Annabeth found them an hour later after going around the crack (which extended for half a mile), giggling like idiots. _Very tired_ idiots.

"Hi, Bethy!" Percy called, looking up at her. "Wow, you look pretty. Do you like our master piece?" He pointed in the general direction of the crack.

Annabeth sighed. She'd been hoping to chew them out for splitting the camp, but when Percy was like this he wouldn't remember it when he woke up from a twenty-four-hour 'nap'. "Hi, Percy. Thank you. Yes, it's very nice," she said agreeably, and dragged her boyfriend over to the wheelbarrow she'd brought, just in case, and then unceremoniously threw Nico in after him, and rolled them back around the crack, and carted the two giggly boys into the infirmary. Will, who was reading a book, raised an eyebrow at the mode of transportation, and at the fact that Percy, their savior, the arguably most powerful person in camp, was _giggling_.

"Uh..." he said, even as he put down his book and hauled the cousins out of the wheelbarrow and settled them in beds. "Do I even want to know?"

Annabeth rolled her eyes. "Have you looked outside recently?"

Will shook his head, swiftly knocking out Nico and Percy and dribbling a little bit of nectar into their mouths. He briskly checked them over for injuries, but there wasn't any. "Just some over-extertion of their powers is all. They should be okay within twenty-four hours."

"Of sleep," Annabeth added wryly. Will laughed and nodded. "You'll see why their exhausted if you go outside."

Will looked warily at the door. "Is it a bad thing that I really don't feel like going outside?"

Annabeth shrugged. "I don't blame you. They cracked the camp in half."

"_WHAT_?" Will shrieked, bolting for the door and flinging it open. A ten-foot wide chasm split the camp in half, going right between Zeus and Hera's cabins, around Hestia's hearth at camp, ending in the middle of the volleyball pit. The other end was somewhere in the woods. Will's mouth hung open in shock.

"That's what Sherman gets for pissing off two of the Big Three's kids," Annabeth said with finality, behind him, leaning against a wall, smirking.

"No _shit_," Will breathed.

**A/N:**

**I am laughing _so__ hard_ because of this oneshot! I find it a bit short by about five hundred words or so (I'll probably redo it later, when I feel like it) (so in other words, when I'm so bored I'm banging my head against my flimsy walls) (I put my head through my wall once, BTW) (Okay, jeez, FOCUS, Winter!).**

**ANYWAY, is there anything I can expand on in this? Maybe tie this in with Common Enemy and have it in Hades or Poseidon's POV or something, having a good laugh over the unintentional destruction of Camp Half-Blood? I know it's already tied in with Control, and I have a bad habit of subconsciously tying (sp?) my one-shots together. I might as well do it consciously this time.**

**Thanks for reading!**

**-Winter**


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